Heating your European home right & how to save money and energy

Heating your European home right & how to save money and energy

By Sugin Musgrave and Sonja Batchelor

This is how you can save money:

Wearing the correct clothing, having extra blankets to cover up with around the house, flannel bed sheets and heavier blankets for bed, sleeping in heavier pajamas and wearing slippers with socks around the house are great ways to cut your heating cost.

Remember the SUN! Open those your curtains, shades or shutters/‘rolladen’ this not only can help bring in heat but you can use the sunlight for light and remember to close when dark.

Only heat rooms you are in and don’t block the heaters with furniture or curtains. For example if you are not in your bedroom all day then turn down the heater to 1-2 (not past the snow flake) and then turn the heat up to 2-4 about 30 minutes before you plan on going to bed. If you like to sleep with an open window the door(s) to the other rooms should stay closed.

When you are not home leave your heaters on 1 or 2. Then when you get home turn them on 2-4. Or, if available, set the heater timer to turn it down while you are absent and sleeping and set it to heat up just before you get home. These often offer different settings per weekday. Some handles show what preferred setting should be.

IMPORTANT:

IF YOU LEAVE YOUR HOME FOR A LONGER TIME PERIOD AS FOR DEPLOYMENT OR VACATION, MAKE SURE TO LEAVE THE ALL ROOMS HEATER ON LOW (1 or 2 according to current weather predictions; The snowflake setting is only warm enough to protect the radiator itself, not the water lines around it.) TO PREVENT THE LINES TO FREEZE, BURST AND CAUSE A FLOODING DURING YOUR ABSENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Program heater thermostats you can get in the hardware stores between 20 and 50 Euro to automatically sink the temperature in unused rooms if needed.

The ideal room temperature:

Living room: 20 – 22 Celsius

Kitchen: 18 – 20 Celsius

Bedroom: 16 – 18 Celsius

Bathroom: 23 Celsius

This way you can save a lot energy and money. Base rule: 1 Celsius less saves 6% energy

Stop the drafts: Inspect weather stripping around exterior doors, windows, pipes, and outlets. For contact the landlord before installing anything permit. For doors rolled towels or door draft stoppers will stop cold air from coming in and stop hot air from leaving. If your windows leak, seal them with self-adhesive rubber or foam seal bands from the hardware store. For pipes and outlets contact your local hardware store for foam or insulation and FYI closing some of these area will help keep out the mice.

Airing out your home the right way and stopping mold:

This is very important not only to prevent from mold but to keep a good room climate that makes you feel comfortable and gives your body what it needs not to suffer through the season. You will sleep better/ work easier and just enjoy your life more instead of dragging along without energy.

You must vent your home to prevent mold. However don’t constantly tilt open your windows. You can lose hundreds of Euro per heating season!

Instead:

Try open your windows only a few times a day (the rooms with more moisture, then open more often when needed. For example in bathrooms, bedrooms and kitchens) opening your windows widely for about 5-15 minutes (if the temperatures are around freezing 5 minutes at a time are enough). Before airing turn of the heater in the particular room and close the door(s) to the other rooms.

Most bathrooms, kitchens and laundry rooms in Europe don’t have exhaust fans. In one of our bathrooms there is no window and the mold was starting. What I did to fix that problem was I got a small rotating fan that was turned on before hot showers. Once the person was out of the shower they ajar the door letting air flow. *As remember to turn the fan off once the room is dry we set a timer to ring*

Space heaters: Watch out for electricity monsters like electro ovens and electro space heaters only use energy effective heaters in rooms you are in. NEVER LEAVE SPACE HEATER ON UNATTENED.

Please know the information below is found by online research and there is no personal experience involved.

There are many different manufactures out there and their floor heating system can be different from each other. To find out exactly how to heat with your floor heating and if you have problems, contact your landlord or the manufacturer.

Also you need to know if you are heating with floor heating only or if you are using a combination with gas heating or other.

Most floor heating systems can automatically sink the temperature during night time and still keep a steady temperature. Ask your landlord or manufacturer about the basic settings and what you need to know.

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Here are the basics:

First of all: Consider yourself lucky if you are heating with a floor heating system. Underfloor heating is healthy. Hardly raising any dust, it is the perfect heating system for people suffering from allergies. Secondly, the gentle radiant heat provided most heating systems acts directly on the body without the intermediate stage of first warming the room air. The result: the same comfort level, but with a 2° C lower room temperature. Certainly this is beneficial to your health, because warm feet and cool head is exactly what the human body requires.

First thing I am finding out about floor heating is, that bleeding the air out of it is a much more complicated process and not the same with many different manufactures using slightly different processes. So at least for the first time, contact your landlord and as him to check on it and take care of it or to send a professional to do it if needed. Bleeding the air out of the floor heating system can be necessary if the evenly provided heat is affected as if some lines are not flowing right.

Most used floor heating systems are built using water lines to produce the heat. In earlier floor heating years they also used electricity powered floor heating, which then turned out to be inefficient with the high cost of electricity these days. Find out which system your house uses!
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How to efficiently heat with floor heating systems?

If you want to efficiently use your floor heater and safe energy in the process, for starters you need to realize that floor heating systems are considered Low-Temperature-Heaters. This means they will take some time to heat up a room. They are not build to heat rooms up fast, but they will uphold the warm temperature for longer once created. For you this means that using floor heating you should not keep turning the heat on and off, but instead uphold a continues heat flow. Following this fact it is not recommended to turn it off before leaving the house. It would take way to much energy to heat it back up and it would take a long time to do so. That would leave you sitting in the cold plus it would use more energy up than you planned to save when turning it off.

Keep all doors shut during day and night time. Do not try to heat the cold bedroom by opening the door and thinking the heat from the next door room will do the deed. This could result in mold issues.

PS:
There should be on/off switches either in each room or in a central location. Ask your landlord if you don’t know where it is.